Covalent Organic Frameworks for Water Treatment

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are an emerging type of porous crystalline material with highly ordered aperture size and tunable structures with designer properties. COFs have been proposed as promising materials for water treatment because of their notable intrinsic properties like excellent chemostability, high surface area, abundant functional sites, and uniform adjustable aperture size. This review focuses on fundamental COF design principles for water treatment (stability, aperture size, and surface functionalization) and the state-of-the-art application of COFs in desalination, organic contaminant sorption, and ion capture. Additional potential promising applications of COFs for water treatment, including solar steam generation, photocatalysis for degradation of organic contaminants, and capacitive deionization are also presented along with an outlook toward future opportunities in the field.

Automated summary

COFs are considered promising materials for water treatment due to their superior stability, high surface area, abundant functional sites, and adjustable pore size. This review discusses the fundamental design principles of COFs and their state-of-the-art applications in desalination, organic contaminant sorption, and ion capture, as well as their potential applications in solar steam generation, photocatalysis for degradation of organic contaminants, and capacitive deionization in water treatment, providing an outlook towards future opportunities in the field.